Meta

Dearth of Customer Service

Okay, so as I’m sure some others of you are doing this week, it’s time for your Fantasy Football Draft. I had rounded up some friends and put a league together. Not a big league, but enough to make it competitive. I chose to use CBS’ Sportsline fantasy football manager, which costs $139.95 for a good league setup and a trophy. That’s all well and good, as I used it last year in a league I was in, so I figured it would work out.

Then came this Monday – I was able to get everyone together for a draft at 8:30 pm, which got amazingly into the fourth round, before a combination of their servers dying and Comcast cable Internet services going out for a few hours. So we had to reconvene same time last night (Tuesday). After about three more hours, we amazingly completed the draft, but not without various restarts of computers, reloading of their site at least 100 times (just on my PC), and with various picks having to be called into me directly because of lack of access. Apparently, this was widespread, which you can read all about on their message boards today. I have yet to hear back from their customer service, which usually “responds within 24 hours”, and neither has anyone else. Needless to say, if this is going to be down like this every Sunday morning/early afternoon, it’s going to be a disaster. I’m attempting to find out if I can get a refund for us, and move to someone else like ESPN, whose League Manager is pretty good, and since I already have the completed teams, it’s only like $99. Not a bad choice. So we’ll see if CBS owns up and responds or just sits there and ignores this situation. I know, I can post this on lingosphere sports, but I figured it deserved to be a main page read.

Back to other things..

More reports of a future terror attack on London, warns Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir John Stevens… At this point I could see why this would be suspected – with the recent activities in various nations, it wouldn’t be a stretch to see another massive attack on a major city, Europe, North America, or otherwise.

And back to side effects. A recent ad for Prempro and Premarin, for menopausal symptoms, had some kooky side effects. What’s worse – hot flashes, or vaginal bleeding, leg cramps, itching (which is something it’s supposed to fix), among other things. I can’t be sure, but I swear that the commercial has big text on the bottom saying that “Women with uteruses have a higher chance of uterine cancer.” or something. Ya think? Even if it wasn’t this one, it was a similar drug, but I’m pretty sure this was it. Who thought this was a good idea.

Back to sports for a second – this has to be the funniest poll ever. People are posting their teams and trades and whatnot, and this guy wants to know what he should drink on Week 1 Sunday.

You know, I was literally just talking about the topic of this post at boingboing the other day. If countries all have their own names, why do English speakers have other names for them? Other languages do it too, but they shouldn’t be translated – they are proper nouns. Just because “Joe” is “Jose” in Spanish, doesn’t mean you would call “Joe Smith” “Jose Smith”! It’s ludicrous. America is America, not Amerikansk, or whatever. They are what their names are, and they don’t need to change. Great link by them.

Check out the spiffy new Toyota Prius hybrid car. New features like all-electric driving and self parking…

While we’re driving – New Jersey is changing its rules on renewing or getting a new license. You have to score at least six points, with various forms of ID. I’ve never brought anything except a license to renew mine, but now you need your license, and at least two other forms, to add up to six. I’m glad to see that my current license is only worth one point. Fascinating. [update] And, as it gets harder for the current license holder to get a license, the California Assembly has voted to allow for “undocumented immigrants” to acquire a drivers’ license. I could comment here, but would go on for ever.

Cameron Diaz broke her nose while surfing in Hawaii on her 31st birthday. Perhaps she should go to the Netherlands, where Dutch Customs officials found 2,000 baboon noses in an abandoned piece of luggage in Amsterdam airport. Fascinating.